Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

What a strange power the perception of beauty is! It seems to ebb and flow like some secret tide, independent alike of health and disease, of joy or sorrow. There are times in our lives when we seem to go singing on our way, and when the beauty of the world sets itself like a quiet harmony to the song we uplift.

I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

Keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world.

I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can't be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.